For Kennedy, Eugene was familiar territory

Sunday

John F. Kennedy made four visits to Eugene between 1958 and 1960, according to Register-Guard archives.

Here’s a rundown of each visit.

May 18-19, 1958

Then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Kennedy gave the “Sunday Evening Address” on May 18 at the Roosevelt Memorial Dinner at the University of Oregon’s Erb Memorial Union.

A series of three photographs showing Kennedy in town ran at the bottom of The Register-Guard’s May 19 front page, including one of Kennedy with UO freshman Kathryn Knowlton, niece of Robert Thornton, then Oregon’s attorney general. Kennedy also spoke to local media during a May 19 press conference and gave a speech that day at a “UO assembly.”

April 22, 1960

Kennedy spoke at South Eugene High School during the first of three campaign stops in town that year as he campaigned for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president. A front page photo in The Register-Guard showed a smiling Kennedy surrounded by thrilled high school students who were among a crowd of about 1,750.

The accompanying story — “Kennedy Charges GOP Taking No Leadership in Disarmament” — by reporter Dan Sellard led with a Kennedy quote: “By being second in space, we may have lost the chance for disarmament in space, for the Soviet Union deals from strength.”

Kennedy told the crowd that disarmament and the United States’ position in its economic race with the Soviet Union were among the new problems facing whoever won the 1960 election.

May 18, 1960

“Kennedy Stumps in Eugene” read the newspaper headline. The story by Sellard said Kennedy gave “four short speeches in 2˝ hours” in Eugene-Springfield, including one at the Weyerhaeuser plant in Springfield, one at Eugene City Hall and his first stop of the day, in The Register-Guard newsroom when the newspaper was at East 10th Avenue and High Street downtown.

A photo on the inside pages showed a smiling Kennedy in the newsroom, reading an Associated Press story about his victory earlier that day in the Maryland primary, where he trounced another Democratic candidate for president, U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse of Eugene.

Sellard’s reporting contained comments from the fiery Morse saying Kennedy shouldn’t have entered the Oregon primary because he is an “interloper who is trying to split the Democratic Party.”

In his speech at Eugene City Hall that day, Kennedy told the crowd that Oregon voters would be wasting their ballots voting for Morse but that he would certainly offer his services to the maverick senator in his bid to win re-election in 1962.

“You may think my way of campaigning — sound trucks, shaking hands at plant gates and so on — is a poor way to get to be president,” Kennedy said. “It may be that, but it’s the best way I’ve found.”

The Register-Guard not only endorsed Kennedy over Morse in the Oregon primary, the newspaper — whose editorial writers of the day didn’t exactly have a warm and fuzzy relationship with their hometown senator — even included this advice for readers on its May 19, 1960 front page: (Voters finding it difficult to vote for Senator Kennedy would be well advised to write in the name of Adlai Stevenson). Kennedy would win the Oregon primary with more than 87,000 votes to Morse’s 55,350.

Sept. 7, 1960

During his final Eugene campaign stop, Kennedy spoke at the Lane County Courthouse. A front-page Register-Guard photo showed Kennedy autographing a large sign that read “Even Beanpickers Like Kennedy.”

Sellard’s story — “Oregon Crowds Hear Kennedy State Cure for Ailing America” — quoted Kennedy as saying that he found “the American people very uneasy about” the nation’s loss of prestige in the world.

“They wonder why a new generation in the Congo, who once quoted Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt, now quote Karl Marx,” Kennedy said. “They wonder why in nations of South America, our former Good Neighbors, stones were thrown at our vice president, and they wonder why America is regarded with so much contempt in the once-friendly island of Cuba, only 90 miles away, that its erratic leader feels free to denounce us with words and threaten us with missiles.”

— Mark Baker

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